Ovens such as tunnel ovens for cooking bread products are known in the art. Tunnel ovens use air impingement heaters. The air impingement heaters are used in toasting/cooking bread products such as pizza, toast and the like. One example of such a tunnel oven is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,107 to Archer. Archer discloses a tunnel oven. The tunnel oven has a conveyor belt for moving food through a heat treatment passage, a fan, a number of jets, a number of slots and a first and a second plenum.
The first and the second plenum have the air slots and the jets discharging air at a predetermined temperature. This air is blown through a round array of air slots onto the food that is on the conveyor belt. The array of air slots is generally uniform in shape. The air slots are round in shape. Although effective, this round air slot shape limits the cooking of the food and also limits heat transfer on to the surface of the food. The air slots limit the air being discharged to sweeping across the surface of the food. Although effective in cooking and/or toasting an outer surface of the food a detriment is that an inner surface of the food can potentially remain raw or relatively less cooked than desired due to this sweeping of the air stream across the food.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved cooking device that is capable of rapidly cooking food.
There is a further need for a cooking device having an air impingement heater that provides air at a predetermined temperature that sweeps across the surface of the food and that selectively cooks the inner surface.
There is a need for such a cooking device that provides air at a predetermined temperature that penetrates heat through the surface of the food.
There is a need for such a cooking device that provides air at a predetermined temperature that sweeps across the surface of the food and penetrates heats through a top surface of the food.
There is a need for such a cooking device that can be easily cleaned.
There is a need for such a cooking device that has an improved orifice configuration.